The Mourning Run

How Running. . . helped. by Robert Broder

The Mourning Run

Mid-February

Snow melting

Ground is slushy

I don’t mind if my socks get wet

I’ll continue to run

Leaping over big puddles

And crunching on thin ice

My playlist is on shuffle

As the chatter is on repeat

Thinking of you

It’s always about

You

Again

And again

And again

All this breath work

This Mindfulness

Is exhausting

Be in the moment, they say

But they, don’t know.

Be still, I tell myself

And I try

For tomorrow

Coffee first

And then out for another

mourning run.

After my daughter Stella was born not breathing, and hours later leaving my wife at the hospital to sit in an ambulance heading to an emergency NICU in Boston, to find out she is brain damaged globally and will have no chance of life, 12 days later she took her last breath in my arms . . . now what?

So that was it, just leave the hospital and go back to everyday life. Like the past nine months never happened. The excitement of welcoming a baby, the singing, hugging, and kissing my wife’s belly, the prep into making her room so special… al…